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Classing it up would be to bring back Planet Hollywood, more brass, and putting the exotic birds back.

Plan on installing a time machine do we? They could also pipe in Bette Davis Eye's back into to malls muzak system (as per the article) and don't forget the bear cubs in phase one by Eatons! Oh they can bring back Eatons while they are at it!

Jagators63 the Journal said they were going to redo the entrances so some of the exterior looks to be redone.

But obviously a very warm place must have frozen over for Triple5 to announce this. With the Simons store coming in it seemed to be some sort of catalyst for change. The bits about new waterslides and rides are great for the tourist crowds but the vast majority of Edmontonians just want all the clutter, mirrors, and ugly biege brick to go away.

Time will tell if it is a real reno on the scale of Kingsway or Southgate or just more band aids to cover up the scabs.

you know, for a mall that is 30 years old and had minimal renovations done to it, it doesn't look too bad. I mean, it could be worse. I think its saving grace is all the natural light that gets into it during the day.

For starters, the store will be so large that it will take over an entire corridor of the mall’s Europa Boulevard on Level 2 of Phase 3.

“We’re going to have to move in excess of 12 tenants to accommodate Simons,” said West Edmonton Mall president and CEO Don Ghermezian on Thursday. Some of the existing retailers will be relocated and others bought out and the store will take up some common space as well.

At 120,000 square feet, Simons will be nearly the size of the mall’s current Zellers store and four times its H & M shop.

Simons is expected to open in August 2012.

Simons coming to West Edmonton Mall is also remarkable in that it will be the popular Quebec clothing retailer’s first store outside its home province.

While traditional department stores are struggling to hold on to market share and losing sales to other retailers, the 170-year-old Quebec City-based chain is in growth mode.

The Edmonton store will be its eighth.

Industry observers describe Simons as a retail success story, selling affordable to high-priced fashions for men, women and home, including top designers and its own house labels.

Those were my thoughts exactly - years ago. Since then I've realized how critical some of the mirrors are to the proper light distribution and visual perspectives in differing areas of the mall. The problem is that they went way overboard placing mirrors seemingly EVERYWHERE. They should have been used very minimally and very strategically.

i.e. some mirroring high up around the relatively narrow skylights visually widens one's perception of the sky and removing the mirrors might risk creating a feel that one is looking up from the bottom of a crevice. Those mirrors also aid in light distribution. Additionally some of the mirrors between floors also helps light distribution. In some places they also create a more 'open' feeling. Their application though looks really cheap due to the poor design.

Classing it up would be to bring back Planet Hollywood, more brass, and putting the exotic birds back.

Now that's Funny! Yeah, it always did seem like they'd hired Jethro Bodine's design company when the built the place.

A few things on my wish list:
- get rid of the carnival midway feel
- repaint the IMAX / movie theatre exterior to more upscale colours (again - they too have a carnival look to them)
- roof over the mall entryways to reduce the amount of snow and dirt that gets tracked in
- drain the "cement pond", remove he ship and pond and turn the whole space into a large forest or tropical-like restaurant(s) with walking paths among the tables
- somehow redo all the fake purple and blue and coloured rocks to look a lot nicer
- clean up the water with their cracked marble floors and maybe add back a few of the fountains.

If I'd had my say years ago, I'd have redone the mall area around the hotel and maybe the whole sector floor around the pond to look a lot like the concourse mall at the Jasper Park Lodge - carpet and all. But then I'd have never in my life thought of having 'theme' rooms in a hotel. I guess they knew their market.

^^They would not even have to retro-fit it with a kitchen. Use the ship for a coffee and cake stop. There is only one good coffee shop in WEM (Tim Horton's) and that is usually packed. I'm not saying the ship should sell Timmies but maybe another coffee place could take over.

The Ship needs to be used better thats for sure. I would hate to see it go though. But right now its way under utilized

I always thought "shipwrecking" it and using it as part of a restaurant (kind of like the above post with the jungle theme) would be awesome.

Those pirate ship dining/adventures you can do in many tropical tourist zones like Cancun and the Bahamas are in high demand. Why not do something similar in West Ed, but slightly alter the theme?

How soon we forget the Rainforest Cafe concept from the 80's......
Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney would sue again no doubt) with Captain Jack Sparrow look alikes as waiters. Maybe Triple 5 could call it The Pirates of Somalia and redo the Santa Maria as a hijacked tanker.....

I wonder if they plan on moving forward with that expansion to the mall that they had planned a year or two ago. This would be the perfect time to do it considering they will be renovating and they will have a large chunk of the mall eaten up by the new dept store. Also this could be a great time to do some renovations that could interact better with the future LRT station.

Yeah the term "multi-million" does sound low but imagine how much cheap tile and paint that will buy .
I think they are just using a generic term until they actually find out the budget. A complete update to the interior, entrances, upgrading the waterpark and Galaxyland is going to cost some serious $$$$.

But and this is a big BUT Triple5 has always been big on spin and hyperbole so time will tell if they actually walk the walk. The "test" section in front of the Victoria's Secret store is clean and nice looking but hardly "unlike any other mall in Canada"
It's already unlike any other mall in Canada as inside WEM it's basically still the mid 80's while outside it's 2011.

if they come close to what Yorkdale did in TO, I would be happy. But that's big shoes to fill in terms of style (on the inside of it).

Yorkdale isw a great example of a stylish mall (interiorwise) as you said Sherway is also fairly nice. Eaton Centre downtown now going through a makeover of it's own to update some of it's glaring 70's design elements to me sets the bar in Toronto. Even though TEC was showing it's age in some respects it still is far classier and elegant than WEM ever was. Triple5 has always equated tacky flash and glitz as "design" without realizing that good design is almost timeless.
WEM would look sooooo much nicer is they thinned out the ranks of Kiosks, Booths, Carts etc there is so much junk cluttering up the main mall it's like a carnival midway not a shopping mall.

a shopping mall is basically a market. i don't get the complaining about the kiosk people. They are peddling their stuff just like all others. what they don't have in splashy store fronts they make up in a particular style. If one deasn't want to do budiness with them do what I do: a combination of ignore/ no thank you depending on the mood.

I've always thought the fountains in general were noisy and unnecessary. I am not sad to see thm go unless the mall wants to do a Venice theme

a shopping mall is basically a market. i don't get the complaining about the kiosk people. They are peddling their stuff just like all others. what they don't have in splashy store fronts they make up in a particular style. If one deasn't want to do budiness with them do what I do: a combination of ignore/ no thank you depending on the mood.

I've always thought the fountains in general were noisy and unnecessary. I am not sad to see thm go unless the mall wants to do a Venice theme

I personally do not mind SOME carts or kiosks but if WEM has an extra couple of square feet bang! in goes a cart. Selling Hello Kitty Doggy Diapers or SHAM WOW wall to wall carpeting all sorts if "useful" stuff etc etc etc There is a limit people will engage with kiosks otherwise you dodge around them and tune them out. WEM still needs to learn less is more.

a shopping mall is basically a market. i don't get the complaining about the kiosk people. They are peddling their stuff just like all others. what they don't have in splashy store fronts they make up in a particular style. If one deasn't want to do budiness with them do what I do: a combination of ignore/ no thank you depending on the mood.

I've always thought the fountains in general were noisy and unnecessary. I am not sad to see thm go unless the mall wants to do a Venice theme

I personally do not mind SOME carts or kiosks but if WEM has an extra couple of square feet bang! in goes a cart. Selling Hello Kitty Doggy Diapers or SHAM WOW wall to wall carpeting all sorts if "useful" stuff etc etc etc There is a limit people will engage with kiosks otherwise you dodge around them and tune them out. WEM still needs to learn less is more.

I find it funny that many of the same people that say we need more traffic congestion and street-fronting retail to create a sense of urbanism outside hypocritically say the opposite about how WEM should utilize it's space inside.

The same principles apply: create congestion, and load every remaining space with profit-generating retail. If the halls were clear, people would speed walk and miss most of what's going on. By slowing them down with congestion, all of a sudden that RC helicopter you would never have looked at might get a 2nd glance and become interesting. Obviously they sell enough to stay in business.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" - Blaise Pascal

a shopping mall is basically a market. i don't get the complaining about the kiosk people. They are peddling their stuff just like all others. what they don't have in splashy store fronts they make up in a particular style. If one deasn't want to do budiness with them do what I do: a combination of ignore/ no thank you depending on the mood.

I've always thought the fountains in general were noisy and unnecessary. I am not sad to see thm go unless the mall wants to do a Venice theme

I personally do not mind SOME carts or kiosks but if WEM has an extra couple of square feet bang! in goes a cart. Selling Hello Kitty Doggy Diapers or SHAM WOW wall to wall carpeting all sorts if "useful" stuff etc etc etc There is a limit people will engage with kiosks otherwise you dodge around them and tune them out. WEM still needs to learn less is more.

Don't know much about retail, do you.

Buddy, I have worked in the retail industry my entire life. So I think I may know a thing or two about it. You just proved YOU have a pretty limited understanding about how retail and malls work when it comes to a positive "customer experience". But I guess if your a pro at buying everything you need in your life at a flea market or garage sale then amount of tat clogging the aisles doesn't bother you. Try visiting some major malls in other parts of Canada, US, Europe, South America or South Africa like I have. Not one I have seen is nearly as cluttered with crap as WEM.

But if you like it then WEM is obviously marketing to your demographic not mine.

^^^ Yorkdale is a great mall. Probably the best in the country. Generates more dollars per square foot than any other retail space in Canada. When it was built, that was the edge of town. (The original name for the 401, on the north side of the mall, was the Toronto Bypass.)

I really want to be positive about this... but it very clear that this is a joke.

No one would launch a media blitz with.... NOTHING to blitz. West Ed has been loosing local market share to malls like Kingsway and Southgate. Something had to be done... sadly it was done in typical West Ed style....

Look at any cities Major Mall/shopping center... the condition of them is MILES ahead of the current state of WEM. The best thing that could ever happen to WEM is the Fairview Cadillac bought it. We could only hope and pray... Maybe these renos are the lick of paint before the mall goes up for sale. We could only hope at least.

"Do you give people who already use transit a better service, or do you build it where they don't use it in the hopes they might start to use it?" Nenshi

^that is if they do a real reno and not just give a new splash of paint and scrape the bubblegum off the floor.

Well they have already started painting!!!!!! LOL yesterday they had a section of the Phase III food court roped off with "Wet Paint on Seats" signs up!!!!!! It's underway

Also it should cost several million alone to patch the cracked marble floors in the former high class "Park Lane" wing remember that!!! (FYI for those of you who do not remember the mall in 1981 that is the upstairs section where Hollister and American Eagle are.....Very Very Very High Class)
Also to respackle the rest of the faded, cracked, chipped terrazzo floors they have let go since the mall opened.

Also it costs big bucks to replace all the brass handrails that still have drill holes in them from the time they installed LED lights on every rail in the mall then took them out when they could not keep them working leaving the holes visible almost everywhere you look in the brass.

Well one thing though is at least Triple 5 is not as dumb as the owners of the South China Mall. Great concept, horrible execution and decisions. In comparison Triple 5 look like brainiac's.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Mall

Well if Triple5 released some concept photos and dollar amounts pertaining to this massive renovation they say they will soon be embarking on, Then maybe we can actually post some valid or constructive comments
Until then their past track record for spin and hyperbole preceeds them.
As stated previously when Oxford and Ivanhoe-Cambridge announced the expansion and renovations at Kingsway and Southgate they were far more forthcoming about thier plans.

The Ghermezians have always overpromised and underdelivered in most of their mega projects in this city. Westmount, Eaton Centre, Argyll Plaza, West Edmonton Village alot of bland boxy pebbled concrete buildings that have not aged well scattered around the city.